Ironic Consolations
by PikaCheeka
Summary: Young Dietrich attempts to use his powers to comfort Isaak one night, unaware that in doing so, he is placating his own fears. Isaak and Dietrich as father and son, nonpairing, sort of fluff.


A/N – This was meant to be a drabble, perhaps 300 words, but it just sort of took off on me. At any rate, this is mostly based off of canon, but I again took a few liberties with character pasts here and there. This also became an experiment in the third person for me, as it's something I'm not so good at. AND it could almost be called fluff with Isaak and Dietrich as father and son. More bad-guy-sympathy. Tasty.

Ironic Consolations

By PikaCheeka

It was ironic, almost absurd, that his greatest fear was not death, but darkness. He had never told anyone, not even his only friend so any years ago, not even his lovers. The only one who could possibly know about it was his master, and if he knew at all, he didn't much care. So he lived alone in his fear, never daring to do a thing about it. He sometimes wondered if it was due to his failed bloodline that he was in such a state, but he could never know for sure. Whatever the reason, he was born to rule the night, and instead he couldn't stand it. He also sometimes wondered if he despised it, feared it, simply because it proved to him what a failure he was. But he could never know.

He only lay awake on those nights of the new moon, not daring to move, not daring to sleep. There was something out there that he couldn't ever put his finger on, but he knew it was there nevertheless. And it wasn't just out there. It was inside of him. That was the darkness he feared more than anything, to be alone with himself, to know that within him there was that cruel ugliness he couldn't possibly understand enough to control. And at night, when the darkness outside came, there was no escape. His life became one in an oppressive mirror-world.

Dietrich was watching the clock, watching it tick away. Just past one in the morning. There were long hours before dawn, and he knew he wouldn't be sleeping, not when Isaak was awake, not when Isaak's discomfort was tangible in the air, permeating throughout the entire house. He waited another moment before sitting up and running his hands through his red-brown hair. He was unsure of what to do. He knew it had been going on from the first night here, but he had only been unable to sleep because of it on the nights of the new moon. And last month he had been able to ignore it. He looked at the calendar then. Six weeks: he had lived here six weeks now, and he had not been hit yet. He had never lasted six weeks without getting hit.

Because in ways, Isaak was even more of a child than he was.

The boy hesitated another long moment, shivering with uncertainty. He flexed his fingers and wondered what would happen when Isaak learned of his powers. Not that Isaak didn't suspect he wasn't normal, but he hadn't seen it. Hadn't felt it. And Dietrich was terrified of showing him. He had never once in his life used them without being severely punished. He didn't count the time when he finally wiped out his entire family; no. The only satisfaction he ever received from their deaths was that he would no longer be beaten. He would no longer have the muzzle of a gun shoved down his throat and he would never have to go for weeks locked up without food. He would never again have to hear his own parents call him the devil. He would hear it from everyone else, but that didn't bother him so much.

After all, over time he had come to suspect there was some truth behind those accusations.

He knew what he ought to do but he was afraid. He could make it go away for Isaak, and for once his powers would be useful. He smiled, almost shyly, to himself as he now cracked his knuckles, wishing for a moment he were able to use them on himself, wishing he were able to give himself enough courage to go down the hall and do it. But the last time he'd tried them on himself he had been hurt badly. And the last time he had tried to help someone he had been hurt badly.

The first time he had used his strings was when his little sister died. He hadn't known her. He had barely known he was going to even have a sister. She was just there, in the house, one day, and the next day she was gone and all his mother did any longer was cry. He had always been ignored by her and hit by his father, but the real abuse, the real fear, hadn't started until that day. He was four, or three; he couldn't even remember, and he had gone to his mother and tried to help. It was simple really, to see the void and fill it with something, to bring things around, weave them together, so suddenly the pain was less, the memories weakened.

Dietrich was the last child his parents had to survive the first week of his life. His sister died, and none of the three following her even made it out of the womb alive. His parents blamed him, as he was the devil-child, able to manipulate human emotions, able to erase memories, without even moving. He was a freak, a changeling child, a demon. They had him exorcised and beaten and tortured and finally, when his mother's deterioration was too much for his father to bear, they had tried to kill him.

Instead, he had killed them.

Isaak closed is eyes and sighed. As always, the darkness behind his eyelids was more painful than the darkness without. He had used to go for days at a time with no sleep at all; he was afraid of sleeping, when the darkness could hold full reign over him and do as it wished with him. He sometimes felt that with every passing night, every time he closed his eyes and succumbed, he changed inside, became darker and darker, and sooner or later he would wake up and it would be unending night.

It was absurd, really, and it even made him laugh sometimes to think about it, but after twenty-five years the fear was still strong in him, and he doubted it would ever pass. There was only one night he could recall where he did not feel this way, and that was several years past, the night his closest friend and secret love became his lover. But that was one night, and since then his fear of the dark had only intensified. Now not even lights made a difference. The shadows all around him were closing in, and he suspected that it was only a matter of time before not even day mattered.

He sighed and pushed himself back onto the pillows, wondering absently if his surrogate son was asleep. Di didn't sleep enough, though he seemed healthy enough despite it. He wasn't so very concerned about it, but it was difficult to get through even an hour without the boy dominating his thoughts. What would he think if he knew of Isaak's fear? He would laugh, Isaak suspected. He hates it when Dietrich laughed at him or mocked him, as he would do when his cockiness got the better of him.

As Dietrich was already on his mind, he was surprised to suddenly see his protégé sidling into the room. But then, he knew, Di had a strange habit of appearing when Isaak sat down and thought about him. It was one of his bizarre uncanny abilities that made Isaak at once uneasy and excited around him. He was terrified of having Dietrich know his thoughts, his past, his sorrows, his lusts and his fears, but at the same time he was fascinated. Still, he had no desire to be bothered now.

"What do you want?" Isaak snarled, his emotions on the verge of embarrassment. He didn't care that he was being rude, though normally he found himself trying to be gentle with that fragile little demon-child he had brought home one day. He already can't imagine life without the boy, even when he was being obnoxious and difficult.

Dietrich only shrugged in response and Isaak noticed he was trembling slightly. But when he raised his hands up he paused. "I can make it go away." He said it so quietly Isaak doubted he had even heard the words, but he responded as if he had.

"You don't know what you're talking about." The boy was strange. That was undeniable. Cain had warned him. Cain had told him the boy was a freak, but he had ignored the words. He was already attached despite himself. He had gone too long in life being alone.

He only lay back and watched the boy through half-slitted eyes. He wished he could roll over and fall asleep, but he couldn't. Even with a light on. He knew the darkness was out there, all-consuming, just waiting to suck him in. Dietrich was pretty in his own way, and Isaak supposed there was nothing wrong with watching him. He couldn't read the boy's intentions, though somehow he knew there was nothing cruel in them. Only inexperienced and shy.

It wasn't difficult for Dietrich to pick up on the proper threads of nerve. Fear was one of the easiest emotions to manipulate, second only to the conundrum of pleasure and pain. He had never so openly found Isaak's stream. There had been plenty of times in the last six weeks, and the month or so before he was brought home, when he had subtly pushed Isaak one way or another. He was desperate for the attention, for the love that the older man promised. The bullet scar in his chest still ached whenever he got it wet, still made his heart hurt somewhere inside that he couldn't find and fix in himself. But Isaak promised… Isaak's fear was powerful, deep-rooted, not unlike his own, and Dietrich shuddered slightly, feeling it wash over him. He knew without knowing that Isaak was the same as he, only in all his years he had had more time to be rejected. By not only his family, but his lover and his entire race. And he, too, had killed out of sorrow. Dietrich wasn't yet able to control anything without feeling some of whatever he was taking, what he was giving. It was something he worked on, but he was still a child. He didn't really like knowing what was inside others.

The magician was watching the boy intently. In reality it was only a few seconds, but it felt an eternity somehow. He couldn't understand what it was. He only knew that suddenly he wasn't alone in his own mind, and that which was never in his control was now in the control of someone else.

Dietrich.

Isaak felt something change, subtle at first, but with a growing intensity, as if a string within him was touched lightly and it was now reverberating throughout his entire body, his very mind. There was a moment of sheer mind-numbing panic, as he realized that he couldn't even move, that he was completely and utterly helpless, and he couldn't even retreat, as he was no longer himself. But it was over so quickly that a second later he was doubting whether or not he had even felt it, because now there was nothing. He felt a weak ripple somewhere, inside of him or in the air he couldn't determine, and then it fully faded. He did not feel the darkness anymore.

He didn't move for a moment, unsure of himself, unsure of what he had just felt. What had the boy just done? Was this his ability? Was this why he was so abused, so feared? He had suspected it was something like this, but he had never felt it himself, or at least, he realized painfully, he hadn't been aware of it. It didn't matter now though, and studying the waif before him, he saw the question in Di's eyes. Without another thought, he reached his arms out, as if to grab him up.

Dietrich recoiled at Isaak's sudden movement, biting back a cry of fear. He should have expected this. Should have known that in the end, Isaak would be no different…

"Come here." Isaak spoke softly, kindly, but it didn't matter. It was the same tone of voice his father had used that night when he shot him. He reflexively touched his shoulder. _Dietrich. I'm sorry you had to be born this way._ He could see that Isaak's hands were outstretched, empty, but that hardly mattered. You didn't need a weapon to hurt a seven-year-old boy.

"Di." Isaak's voice was still calm. Dietrich hesitated, uncertain, frightened but longing at the same time. Isaak's arms were out. He had never had anyone offer to hug him, invite to hold him, before, and he suspected there was some ugly lie in there somewhere. Once, years ago, he had seen a small child do that same thing to her father, and the child's father had picked her up and held her. Dietrich had been able to feel the joy tantamount in the air, and he had gone home and promptly done the same thing to his mother. His mother who smiled sadly and walked on by him.

But Isaak only waited. He knew better than to get angry. He could argue with and tease the boy all he wanted, but not when Dietrich was like this. Not when his new son was shaking and cringing away from his touch like a kicked dog. It was as if he had just shaken the child awake from one of his screaming nightmares. And it hit him then that Di, like himself, suffered only at night. He still didn't know exactly what the boy had been through, but the first time he bought him new clothes and undressed him, and saw the ugly scar that could only be from a bullet, the chip missing from his shoulder blade, everything had changed. And he realized dully that he loved him. This went beyond vague interest or amusement, even the lust he had initially felt. The boy clearly had his uses, but that wasn't what mattered to Isaak any longer. And when Dietrich finally crept forward to his bed and touched his arm he felt something inside him break.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said calmly.

He didn't answer. Instead he carefully ran his fingers up and down Isaak's forearm. "Is it gone now?" he whispered after a moment, his cinnamon eyes both innocent and knowing in his piqued face.

Isaak didn't wait any longer. He only leaned over and picked the boy up. He was still tiny, still frail and half-starved, only seven after all, and he felt like nothing in his arms. He ignored Dietrich's gasp of surprise and only pulled him tightly against him. "You didn't have to do that." Pushing his face into the child's hair, he sighed. Di was warm, hot even, and for some reason that no longer irritated Isaak. At that moment, nothing about the boy could irritate him, not even the elbow he now pushed into him. Dietrich was always awkward when Isaak held him, as if he had never been touched kindly until recently and he was unsure of how to act.

"I didn't want you afraid." He flinched when Isaak brushed the hair from his eyes and smiled at him. He wanted to trust that smile, wanted to know that the man now holding him would never hurt him, but he was afraid.

The apprehension in the child's eyes only confirmed Isaak's suspicions. This was Dietrich's power, the ability to control, manipulate, the human mind. It was why he was abused, why he was likely orphaned, why he now had an abject distrust, even hatred, of people. "I don't want you to be, either." He said finally, and Di pushed up against him, as if desperate to make up for seven years of no affection. The boy noticeably relaxed at those words; he had always wanted to be held like this.

It was strange really, and almost ironic, that Dietrich's manipulation was almost superfluous, Isaak thought as he leaned over and turned out the light. He had felt the darkness, the fear around him, recede the moment this radiant child had entered the room and smiled at him.


End file.
